Don't 'exploit' me with your advertisements

Today, just as I logged in to check my Facebook account, I received a message from the moderator of a popular advertising page on Facebook to join a debate that was taking shape on exploitative advertising. With nothing else to do, I jumped into the fray. I checked out the topic.As a customer, the guy has a very valid point but let's take a look from the marketer's point of view. This is how it shaped.

Query: Ok.This is something I have been thinking about for a while......it is about what I call exploitative advertising.......Who says that a product sells only if it delivers ???...Take a look at Fair and Lovely...2 decades of sales past, I have not heard (much less seen) anyone's complexion moving over to the fairer side; ...not a friend or friend's friend's friend or even a distant relative or acquaintance. So, intuitively speaking, the product does not work. So, we can safely infer that either the ads lie or the ad-makers are ignorant. But the right choice is irrelevant. You see, the kind of adverts that Fair and Lovely releases, especially in India, seem to prey upon our insecurities. Every man wants to have a fair bride. Every father wants to have a fair daughter. And so, every girl wants to be fair. The ads seem to EXPLOIT all the semi-misogynistic loopholes in our psyche. Now, the phenomenon has moved over to men. The outcome of crucial interviews are decided by a man's confidence, which is inexplicably linked to his complexion ( OH MY GOD ! I AM NOT FAIR !..WILL I EVER BE PROMOTED ?! ).....So the conclusion ???....It is a question.....and also a parting shot at the fleeced customers....Are people really like sheep ??...If you dangle the proverbial carrot, will they really be taken for a ride???....And are ads meant to be that way in the corporate era ??The need of cosmetics is seen from very ancient days. People were using a variety of cosmetic products both for curative purpose as well as beauty ones. Kajal, or Surma, Bindi, Sindoor, Kumkum, Mehandi, Altas, Alaras are some traditional... cosmetics used on those days as certain social symbolic issues besides for preventing the parts of the body from many infections and maintaining the freshness and/ presentablity in different climatic conditions.

Faraaz Kazi: Of the Rs 3,000-crore cosmetics and toiletries market, the skincare segment accounts for Rs 1,200 crore. Fairness products account for a whopping Rs 700 crore of this segment.
Now as far as the company's claims are concerned, it is not a modern phenomenon but has gained momentum in the present. The cream does make you fair but it cannot do so if you're inherently dark, i.e. one can't become fairer than their actual skin colour (hence 75% of the customers claim to have been misled). A very narrow segment on whom the cream doesn't show their effects, can be classified as those who didn't try the product as specified by the company or under their ideal conditions.
Call it exploitative, misleading, false or deceptive, the truth of the matter is, it is here to stay! It's very difficult to allow your product to speak out aloud amidst the competition. As a marketer, what option have you left? Claims such as these are common tools to effectively get your proposition across. It is not that insecurities emerge from claims but the other way round because as a marketer one sees an unsatisfied need there. Yeah, the case of sanitisers as I said. I pointed it out on my blog too recently. It depends on your perspective totally, do you see it as unethical? But at the end of the day, won't you as a customer try it out (even once) if it's an epidemic. As they say better safe than sorry. Consider this in an extreme situation, as an advertiser if I claim if you don't try my product, apocalypse would strike or you would die within 24 hours, would you be willing to try it? Hmmm...that's precisely the reason.
Second, coming to Fair and Lovely (or Fairever or Fairglow or any other fairness product for that matter), claims or not, people will buy it (53% market share). Why? Because each one of us, rich or poor, Hindu or Muslim, has that underlying 'dream' to look and feel good. To carry the confidence that emerges from one's physical appearance. And hence people will buy it. Consider this, as a marketer what other positioning can you apply to a fairness product? There's very little room for negotiation! Yet HUL has done that or at least tried to by experimenting with variants, you have F&L anti-marks cream to ayurvedic and multi-vitamin and once they noticed 32% of males using the cream (not a TG they had specified), the male variant was introduced after Emami. Don't forget, a major factor of their success has been their distribution which reaches all tiers of their effective supply chain. At one point, F&L enjoyed a virtual monopoly with over 90 percent market share but look where it stands today thanks to competition (don't forget the milk-turmeric-kesar paste you apply on your face on weekends).
As a product, all fairness creams essentially use Niacin amide which is known for its skin lightening properties. There were women groups which termed the adverts as regressive. Look at one brighter side of it, at least F&L doens't use celebs to endorse it (the claims could be more misleading then!). We see common faces (Genelia when she was not quite an actress was the most prominent advert on TV) so that people get the feel of reality. On the other side, they also have The Fair and Lovely foundation which promotes educating girls and seeks to empower them (are they nullifying the effects then?) Apart from this, 4 weeks or 7 days countdown to fairness sounds silly, done on improper research because one can easily claim that a complainant's skin isn't essentially the average facial skin, the company has tested it's product on. There's no law against it but lately ASCI has been pulling the noose on a lot of claims issued in ads. Lately, IRDA to passed an order to insurance companies to tighten the noose over agents who sold policies deceptively. For the details, may I request you to look here. At the end of the day, it is upto the consumer and his experiences, what he is ready to believe and what he is not. Ask yourself this: Did Rajnikant truly perform those sci-fi stunts in Robot? As they say (below)

Big enough?

With hugs and kisses to the Consumer,

The Young Marketer.

Advertising 'Strangulating' Council of India

Seven food and beverage majors have come together in a first of its kind agreement, pledging to self-monitor their products adhering to labeled standards. As per European nutritional standards, sugar content of more than 12.5 grams per 100 grams is considered to be detrimental for consumption. But when ASCI pulled up Kellog’s Chocos recently, it was found to contain 32.5 grams of sugar per 100 gram of the product. Indeed, they took their ‘poshan se bhara’ positioning too seriously or so it seems! Heinz’s Complan had to substantiate its claims of kids growing twice as much taller after consuming Complan, after GSK’s Horlicks logged in a ‘complaint’ with ASCI that Heinz was promoting fallacious claims.

ASCI, it seems is not just content with the nutrition factor of food products but also wants to pull up companies which are adopting ‘clutter breaking’ advertising. Recently Parle had to grudgingly pull out its LMN advert as ASCI associated racism and stereotyping with the brilliant ad that showed two African natives searching for water in the midst of a desert. Remember Amul Macho, the famous Kolkota based hosiery brand which was the leading advertiser amongst inner-wear brands in 2005. The famous cloth washing ad which showed a sari clad woman making suggestive expressions while washing her husband’s clothes became an overnight hit. It made tongues wag, some supported, some opposed but the talking helped the brand’s publicity. It created instant brand recall for the innerwear brand in a market which lacks complete brand loyalty. However, the ad had to be pulled off as it was in ‘bad taste’ as per ASCI standards but it had done its job (you still remember it, don’t you?). They did come up with another intelligent advert using orangutans which was again a little suggestive but thank god, no one cried ‘animal porn’ or ‘zoophilia’. There has been a spurt of deodorant brands trying to take on the market leader, Axe by adopting the sensual positioning in a sex deprived market. Set wet and Zatak were the first to take on the challenge and recently players like Wild Stone and Temptation are trying to use the same strategy against Axe (Lol, Axe has been doing that since decades before they were born in markets all across the world!) Some of the newer ads of such nascent brands are thrice as more suggestive as the Amul advert. One even shows steam blowing from a girl’s body parts as the guy walks past and another shows a girl’s piece of clothing falling off. Huh, it’s perfectly all right with me but why the blatant discrimination? This goes to show that competition plays a major role when it comes to igniting flames in successful brand campaigns. This cannot be the case with Axe as it is a multinational player, compared to the newer and smaller and predictably ‘more sensuous’ deodorants in the market. Wonder how long before Unilever submits a ‘complaint’!

Anyways, the seven major companies have also pledged to avoid promoting their products to children below the age of twelve years, a thing that could prove to be a kick in the jaw of channels like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. But this surely has laid down the grounds for ethical advertising in an industry where ethics have usually gone for a toss. The recent news that has reached me also involved a similar incident where 10,000 mandals in Mumbai have agreed upon a pact to avoid tobacco sponsors for this year’s Ganesh Chathurthi. This is startling, going by the fact that sixty percent of the festival sponsors are from the tobacco industry; going by the way they have managed to find ‘innovative’ ways past the banned mass media. A similar incident is being observed in liquor shops which are removing posters of liquor brands from the exterior of their stores.

What works for such industries is their creative conceptualization and effective positioning. With little difference in products and the complete absence of mass advertising, Word of Mouth efforts and surrogate advertising measures, combined with a healthy demand has ensured industry growth. The efforts of Kingfisher, India’s most prolific liquor brand have to be noted in this case. The iconic Vijay Mallya has ensured that the complete lack of advertising doesn’t hamper his growth. Foraying into the airline industry, food guides, the packaged water industry and even a television channel, Kingfisher is one brand which has reinforced its classic tune into the minds of the consumer. ‘Ooola la la ae oooo…’ goes the whistle and we nicely tap our feet to it. Surrogate advertising has made the liquor brand piggyback on its extensions and the main brand, though sidelined has raked in most of the attention. The most brilliant concept was to start a luxury lifestyle channel ‘NDTV Good Times’, in collaboration with NDTV. Please note the channel name does not have any mention of ‘Kingfisher’ but Kingfisher’s iconic blue and red bird occupies twenty four hours on the screen! Please note this is in an era when television advertising costs a bomb and liquor advertising has been completely banned. Of course, the marketing efforts are limited to one particular channel and a niche segment but Kingfisher has always been a premium brand catering to specific lifestyle needs and the channel stays in line with that positioning. So, Kingfisher is actually marketing its liquor without showcasing any visuals. Similar is the case albeit on a small scale with companies like Bacardi (Bacardi Music CDs), McDowells (Soda and music CDs) and of course Godfrey Philips and Red and White (Bravery awards).

With time, ASCI might just find a way for this too if Kingfisher collapses (which I don’t see happening in the short run) A better solution is to impose a ‘sin tax’  and raise prices of such products to discourage consumption but again that might just increase the grey market demand. It never was a question of ethics when it came to advertising, we all know how ethical the industry is! Just wonder are advertisers smarter than the council that monitors them or is it the other way round? Advertising has changed with times. Otherwise will this old PIA to Twin towers print ad, be accepted now? I leave that to you...

With hugs and kisses to the Consumer, 

The Young Marketer.